Self-Service Education

Technology marches forward at an amazing pace. And it’s technology that’s going to continue to revolutionize the opportunities for self-education. What will continue to be the primary driver for the democratization and accessibility of education is technology.

For example, examine a technology like MyEdu that lets college students design, manage and navigate their higher education by enabling them to rather easily pick the best professors, design a class schedule that works for them, balance their work and social life, and more. Imagine the effort all of that would have taken just a few years ago. Now, through the power of technology, a student can do it all with the click of a mouse. Maybe they can use the time saved to spend more time learning.

Yes, MyEdu’s technology is focused on college students, not necessarily specifically self-education, but I’m sure similar technologies will be developed that offer the same type of functionality to self-educators. And technologies exist today that are already revolutionizing self-education. Open source software. Powerful search engines. Massive databases and archives. Social media. E-Learning. Video on demand. Free recorded lectures and presentations (check out TED, my favorite learning resource). Wikipedia. Networked groups. Highly portable computing power. The list is long and growing larger every day, offering the self-educator more ways to learn better.

I call this trend the emergence of Self-Service Education. Students will increasingly pull education to them rather than waiting for educational institutions to push learning content out. Students will identify what they want to learn and technology will empower them with the tools to deliver the appropriate learning directly to them without the need for intermediaries.

What I wonder about is when the tipping point will be reached. At what point will the predominance of learning take place in this manner with formal, institutional learning loosening its grip on its historically monopolistic approach to how we educate people? There’s no way to know. Formal education will always be with us, and it deserves its rightful place among the education options. But self-service education is here and its growth will continue to challenge formal, classroom-based learning until the optimal balance between informal and formal learning occurs. I wonder what that balance will look like? It’s an exciting time for education and an exciting time to be a self-educator.